Political Wisdom: Learning from George Bush’s Mistakes

President-elect Barack Obama “would do well to concentrate on the deeper causes of the public’s disaffection with” President George W. Bush, writes The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne Jr. “Bush did not respect the obligation of a leader in a free society to forge a durable consensus. He was better at announcing policies than explaining them. He dismissed legitimate opposition and plausible doubts about the courses he wished to pursue. It is partly because of these failures that Americans reacted by selecting a successor with such a profoundly different political personality. Barack Obama’s first response to a political problem is to offer a detailed analysis and put the challenge into some larger context. He loves sparring with his intellectual adversaries. And his ‘if you have a better idea, I’ll take it’ approach is the antithesis of the my-way-or-the-highway politics of the past eight years.” That’s not to say all will be perfect under the Obama administration.